


Blood and Tears

by 00Aredhel00



Category: Vampire Chronicles - Anne Rice
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Hopeful Ending, Armand deserves better, Fix-It, How Do I Tag, M/M, VC, and Marius deserves to be called out, post Blood and Gold
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-29
Updated: 2020-04-07
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:35:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23368564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/00Aredhel00/pseuds/00Aredhel00
Summary: This is an epilogue of sorts to "Blood and Gold". Armand comes back to talk Marius after hearing his story.
Relationships: Armand/Marius de Romanus
Comments: 11
Kudos: 30





	1. Blood and Tears

**Author's Note:**

> I apologise for the long foreword. Feel free to skip it if you’re not interested, it just says why I wrote this story in the first place. Just heed the spoiler warning for “Blood and Gold”, “The Vampire Armand” and "The Vampire Lestat". If you haven’t read those books yet and still want to read the story, the foreword might be helpful for understanding what’s going on.  
> I’m currently rereading the Vampire Chronicles which I loved so much for years as a teen and in my early twenties! And guess what? I still love these books. However, knowing what is to come in “Blood and Gold”, which made me so mad that I fell out of love with the series for over ten years, I decided to write a fix-it before I even get there.  
> To understand why I badly need a fix-it, I’ll have to rant a little. I didn’t read any further than “Blood and Gold” over ten years ago when I first read the Chronicles and want to reread all books before starting the newer ones, so if Anne herself tackled the topic in any way, I wouldn’t know. Somehow I don’t believe it.  
> My problem with “Blood and Gold” was that it ruined Marius for me, at least partly.  
> The way he acted all vengeful, didn’t accept Maharet’s decision to let Santino live … it just seemed so out of character for him, and he didn’t even have the guts to do it himself, he let Thorne do it, obviously with his approval, though. Armand just stood by as Thorne killed Santino, looking “confused” or “puzzled” or something like that, which is not just a non-existing reaction to Santino’s death (remember, Santino was an important figure in his life, not really in a positive way, but you expect a little more than confusion in this situation, especially coming from someone who’s about 500 years old), it was also a non-existing reaction to Marius’s story, and sorry Anne, lazy writing. Anyway, that didn’t bother me the most. It bothered me a lot, but there was worse long before that.  
> Just an example: When Marius told his story, he found out that Armand was alive and had joined the coven. He basically blamed him for it (yeah, how dare he trying to survive) and claimed due to him being his maker, Armand would be capable of freeing himself. Right. For what reason, though? Armand was still very young and Marius had been his whole world and he thought him dead. He saw him burn, which must have been so traumatic. You need a motivation to fight. Why would he fight to leave the coven if there was nothing for him out there? That in combination with Marius telling Lestat that making Armand was his greatest crime against their kind because of his youth in “The Vampire Lestat” really pissed me off. And there was no reaction at all to Armand’s book “The Vampire Armand”. Wouldn’t Marius have read it? In “Blood and Gold” Marius acts like Armand didn’t care about him or at least doesn’t anymore, but Armand dedicated about (or more than?) half of his own book covering 500 years to his few years with Marius. And don’t even get me started about the fact that he still thinks he knows what’s best for him, although he deserted him, let him down, forced him to be on his own in a terrible situation after claiming everlasting love to him. He doesn’t respect Armand’s wish for Sybil and Benji to remain mortal, he just makes them vampires, thinking he knows what’s best for Armand, although at this point he had proven many times that he didn’t give a f*** about his well-being. In “The Vampire Lestat” he even said he didn’t think Armand would make it after the coven was destroyed. Still no intention of at least revealing himself to him. You know what you can do with your everlasting love if this is how you show it?  
> So, rant over, I’m sorry, not about the content, but a little about the language ;) I guess it says something about how much I loved this series and the pairing of Marius and Armand in particular when this part still makes me so angry, and it’s actually rare for me to remember so many details of books I last read a decade ago, so I’m not hating on the series, honestly. Everyone should read it, it’s great. But I still think Armand was treated unfairly and Marius’s character was at least partly ruined.  
> So, what I did was writing an epilogue to “Blood and Gold”. Please keep in mind that English is not my first language, I apologise for any mistakes!  
> The story is written from Armand’s POV.  
> I hope you like it!

Everyone else was finally gone. Everyone but me.  
Marius didn’t know about that yet. There were some advantages about maker and fledgling not being able to feel each other or read each other’s thoughts after all.  
I stood on the balcony, looking inside, seeing him sitting on the sofa, a contemplative look on his face. He was beautiful in the dim artificial light from the ceiling lamp. As beautiful as he had been in Venice. Back then, looking at him had made me happy, now it just broke my heart.  
Part of me wanted to go in, talk to him, tell him how he had hurt me, over and over again, and part of me wanted to run and never see him again, part of me wanted to go back in time and feel his arms around me. No … to my own surprise, that last part was silent for the first time in five centuries. Maybe it was dead, finally gone for good.  
Still, I remained perfectly silent, just looking at him, trying to come to terms with what had happened tonight, what I had heard. Why Maharet had called out to me to bear witness, I did not know. It had been so hard to remain stoic while secretly listening to Marius telling his story Thorne together with the others, not revealing my pain to them, my maker’s words cutting into my soul like a thousand knives.  
Watching Santino die in such a horrible way then, was also not something that gave me pleasure. We hadn’t been friends, but we had been at peace. I had always known that Santino had only done what had been expected of him as the coven leader, as I had done many times myself. It had taken me a while not to hate him, but hatred had eventually ceased. It had greatly disturbed me to see him go like this and I even felt slightly guilty for not speaking up for him. But it had all happened so fast. Pandora probably felt that way, too. After all, she had travelled with Santino for a while.  
But that was over. It was too late to change anything. Just like it was too late to unhear what I had heard.  
Marius hadn’t moved, neither had I, but now I spoke up, my voice soft, but knowing fully well that he would be able to understand every word. “Are you happy now?”  
Slightly startled, Marius looked up, his blue eyes finding me immediately.  
After one more moment of silence he finally addressed me, despite not answering my question. His voice, too, was quiet. “I thought you left with the others. Why don’t you come inside?” He forced a smile. It was so very different from the way he had smiled at me in Venice that I couldn’t answer immediately. It was not too late to act as if everything was fine, exchange a few polite words, and leave. But that was not why I was here, was it?  
“I was hesitant to remind you of your greatest mistake, the greatest crime against our kind.” A quote from Lestat’s autobiography.  
I hadn’t expected my voice to remain so calm, almost cold, my face to remain expressionless, and I had certainly not expected Marius to be the one to flinch slightly. Such a human reaction, but Marius had always acted so much like a human.  
“Amadeo, I …”  
“Don’t call me that,” I cut him off. “Amadeo died long ago. He died when he lay awake in his coffin until the rising sun forced him to sleep, thinking of you, grieving for you. He died with every nightmare of you burning.” My voice trembled with anger, but remained quiet, and I hated myself for feeling my eyes sting with blood tears. I forced them back. Damn you, Marius, for still making me feel like the abandoned child I used to be.  
Marius was obviously taken aback. Never, not even in my own book, had I revealed how much I was hurt by him not at least revealing himself to me, letting me know he was alive. Why did it have to be Lestat to tell me that? Throwing it at me in anger, together with what my maker had said?  
Slowly I entered the room now, not taking my eyes off Marius, who was staring at me. I was not afraid, still I did not believe that he would physically harm me, despite what had happened with Santino tonight. And if he had tried to harm me … well, maybe it was worth it.  
But he did not move.  
I sat down in an armchair, facing him. “Are you disappointed?”  
“In what?”  
“In me. No, I know you’re disappointed in me. I mean in the fact that I survived against your prediction. You told Lestat that you thought I would go into the fire or the sun sooner or later after the coven was destroyed. Are you disappointed I didn’t do it?”  
“What? Of course not.”  
My lips moved upward; the smile was grim.  
“Ama … Armand, please, I know how all this must sound to you, but …”  
For some reason, this made me angrier than anything he had said until then. All these hurtful things dimmed in comparison.  
“Stop it!” My voice was no more than a hiss. “You know nothing! How would it sound to you, if your maker, who swore he would love you forever, called you his greatest crime?”  
“That was merely because of your youth.”  
“I was not that young, Marius. I look old enough to get along just fine.” My voice was rising now for the first time. Just slightly. “And I am more than 500 years old now, I don’t think you should keep using my ‘youth’ as an excuse!” I got up, I just couldn’t sit still any longer. For the lack of having anything else to do, I walked over to the window and leaned against the window still. “How would it sound to you if your maker, who claimed he loved you, who you thought dead for the longest time, only hours ago revealed to a total stranger that he knew very well that you were alive, knew that you were in the hands of satanic coven, and just decided to walk away?”  
Now he was on his feet, too, crossing the distance between us, raising his right hand as if he wanted to touch me, but he decided not to.  
Good.  
“If you had wanted to leave, you could have. You could have saved yourself. I made you what you are, my blood is powerful, you were stronger than them.”  
“Does that make you feel better about yourself? Or do you not even need such a reassurance because at that point you didn’t care anymore already?”  
“Armand, I do care, and you know it.”  
“Do I?” Finally I felt tears running down my cheeks. I was beyond caring. “Then tell my, why would I have left? What was waiting for me outside of the coven? I thought you were dead, you were everything and I saw you burn, and my whole world went down in flames with you. Tell me, Marius, why should I have left and where would I have gone?”  
Pain in his eyes, in his voice. Maybe even regret. Still he tried to justify himself. “You could have started a new life. Lestat was alone, too, after Magnus …”  
“Oh yes, Lestat.” My voice was bitter now. Of course, Lestat, to whom he had revealed himself, whom he had immediately fallen in love with. Who doesn’t? “So I was not strong enough for you, is that it? I was not as strong and bold as Lestat, was I? Maybe not. But when Lestat’s maker went into the flames he had known him for mere hours. But I loved you, Marius, with all I had in me. And then I saw you burn, I was grieving, I was alone, I didn’t care what happened to me. And at some point, I had just … I didn’t know … how to …” My voice broke off, at a loss for words, but also unable to speak through the tears now without sobbing openly. My pride didn’t allow me that.  
Now he did touch my arm, but I pushed him away. He was still so much stronger than I was, but he let it happen. “Armand, I couldn’t have known, I cannot read your mind, you know that. I had been hurt myself, I was disappointed to see you there …”  
Was that supposed to comfort me? His voice had an uncharacteristically helpless tone to it and there had been a time when this would have been enough for me to calm down, enough to swallow my own feelings to make him feel better. I couldn’t do that now. I couldn’t. “They would have killed me, if I hadn’t joined them! I was still in shock from everything that happened, I was weak from them starving me. I couldn’t have fought them then if I had wanted to. But them killing me would have been preferable to you, wouldn’t it? You could have grieved for the sweet little martyr, painted his portraits and I would have been out of your life for good.”  
“No!” I took a step back, feeling the window still in my lower back once more. His voice had been so loud that any mortal would have covered his ears. His face crumbled ever so slightly, and something happened that shocked me. Bloody tears where escaping his eyes, too. I had never seen him cry. “I never ever wanted you to die, Amadeo.” His voice sounded so pained that I didn’t even comment on the use of my old name. Never had I seen him so helpless … not since Venice had I seen him so sincere. “In all my existence there was not a single moment in which I wanted you dead.”  
“Well, you have an interesting way of showing that.” It was easy to hide behind sarcasm, and it helped me to keep at a little bit of my dignity while the tears had certainly left red marks on my cheeks. But then again, so had Marius’s.  
He looked away, his voice once more very quiet. “I was afraid, you know.”  
“Afraid? Of them? The coven?”  
“No. If I had known that you would have come with me, I would have fought them gladly. I was afraid you had forgotten me. Afraid you would join them in fighting me. I may have just let you kill me if the alternative was hurting you. That was what I was afraid of.”  
I stared at him, no longer crying, completely silent, stunned. My first instinct was to contradict him again, to laugh at him even, but his whole demeanour made me stop. He looked away, yes, but not because he was insincere, he was very sincere in fact, to my surprise I found that I still knew him well enough to see that, but out of shame. I understood that he was not just confessing this fear to me, but also to himself for the very first time.  
“I would have come with you.” A whisper now, barely audible, not audible to mortal ears at all. “If I had known you were alive, if you had come, if I had seen you, I would have fought them all myself.”  
Was that a sob coming from him? I thought I must have misheard. But then again, maybe not.  
“I will not insult you again by asking for your forgiveness. But I am sorry. For all the pain I caused you. For not being there when I should have been. For breaking all the promises I ever made you.”  
Still, he seemed utterly sincere. Was this really the truth? Was this really the reason for all of Marius’s actions? The fear of rejection should he come to me? It seemed that way. Ah, how could one so old be such a fool?  
I took a moment to compose myself, dry my tears unceremoniously on the sleeve of my dark blue pullover. My voice was still rough when I spoke again. “So you told the whole world repeatedly – because this will be published too, you know – what a terrible and weak fledgling I am because you were afraid I’d reject you if you came to me? You didn’t come to me when I most needed you, because you were afraid I wouldn’t want you?”  
He hadn’t bothered to wipe the tears away, but he was no longer crying either, although the pain in his eyes was something I would never forget. “It does sound ridiculous, doesn’t it?” He said it so solemnly, so seriously that it made my lips twitch for a second before I forced the neutral expression back on my face.  
“So the Great Marius is not perfect after all.”  
A joyless little laugh. “Believe me, I’m far from perfect. For what it’s worth, Armand, I am proud of you. You have come far after the theatre was gone, after Louis and you parted ways. You are not weak, I never thought you were.”  
I sighed. This was so difficult, so different from what I had expected from this talk. All the fight had left me. I had been wrong, too, not even an hour ago, on the balcony. The longing for feeling his arms around me was not dead after all.  
“It means something,” I admitted, slowly looking up at him. “It means a lot.” When he reached out again to gently touch my arm, I didn’t push him away, but I glared at him slightly. “You’re terrible, you know. I came back to be angry with you.”  
“Which you have every right to.”  
“Indeed.” Wonderful, now that just felt silly. I sighed again. “I came here to tell you I hated you and I never wanted to see you again. I wanted to tell you to stay out of my life.”  
He looked like I had slapped him and I rolled my eyes. “Originally. You can’t even let me hate you properly, can you?”  
We looked at each other, I full of defiance, which was obviously exaggerated at that point, he still guiltily and quite obviously trying to figure out whether it was alright to smile over my last remark, and then, at the same moment, we both broke into a short, unsure little laugh. Still full of tension, but it felt good.  
“It is almost dawn,” he mused with a look at the window behind me, as if he couldn’t feel it without looking. “Will you stay? It is too late to safely go somewhere else. You can leave tomorrow.” He hesitated, still not looking at me. “Or you can stay. We can hunt together and then … if you want to … talk some more."  
A last moment of hesitation. I understood him better now. He had made mistakes out of fear. He wasn’t perfect as I thought him to be as a child. But who was I to judge wrong behaviour on the basis of fear, of a mistake?  
“Do you want me to stay? Be honest, Marius, please. If you made this offer because you feel guilty now or any kind of obligation, please be honest this time. Please.” My voice was steady and calm, maybe the slightest tremor in the last word, no more.  
“No.” The answer came immediately. “I do feel guilt, that is true. But I see now that you don’t need me.” He sighed. “I want you to stay. I want to get to know the person my boy has become. Pari passu this time.”  
My Latin, though not perfect, was good enough to understand what he meant: On an equal footing, without him having control over me, without him making decisions for me like the oh so painful one with Sybil and Benji. But I didn’t want to think of that now. He had obviously realised his mistakes. No need to start the accusations anew. And no time. Dawn was indeed near.  
“Alright then”, I said. “Pari passu. I will not call you Master again.”  
“I would not ask for that. And you haven’t today. Marius is fine. I am no longer your master and you are no longer a boy.”  
I nodded. It felt good to hear it from him.  
“I will stay for the day and … tomorrow night.”  
I made no further commitments, but he smiled at me nonetheless and the way he smiled this time, the way he looked at me, reminded me of Venice.


	2. Blood and Regret

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marius's POV of what happened in the first chapter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for your kind reviews on “Blood and Tears”!  
> I decided to write not only Marius’s POV, but also a third chapter about the following night, which should be up sometime this week ;)

\---  
Blood and Regret   
\---

I knew I should feel satisfied.   
After all these years the source of my pain was gone. Santino was dead.   
But that feeling wouldn’t come.   
The house was empty now; everyone was gone. The complete silence was almost unbearable and too many unwanted thoughts were crashing down on me.  
Why had I acted like that? Why had I insisted on Santino’s death? Because of the fire? Because of the pain? I could have done it years ago then without asking for permission, without dragging Thorne into this.   
Why now then?   
The reasonable part in me knew perfectly well that I had lied to myself about the reason I had wanted Santino dead. After all, the feeling of needing revenge to find peace hadn’t been there until only some time ago.   
When exactly?   
Probably after I had given the blood to Amadeo’s children and seeing his reaction. The anger, the anguish. Again, I had made a horrible mistake. I hadn’t done what was best for him, but what I had considered best. I had made a decision that was not mine to make.   
It was difficult for me to admit to mistakes and maybe, just maybe, it had been easier to blame Santino for all this pain, for taking him from me and making us almost strangers.   
Maybe this was why Santino’s death only left me feeling empty.   
I sat on the sofa, perfectly composed, not moving, just staring at the painting of Venice above the fireplace. I had painted it about two years ago.   
Not the modern Venice, but the city as it had been when I had spent the few precious years with Amadeo there; the happiest years of the 2000 years of my existence.   
Santino had taken it all away from me, but his death had not given it back.   
Amadeo had been all too eager to leave, eager to get away.   
Understandably so … after all I had hardly recognized myself tonight.  
Suddenly the stillness was broken by a very quiet voice from balcony. Too quiet for a mortal to hear, but I understood every word and heard the bitterness behind them.  
“Are you happy now?”   
I looked up, although I already knew who it was. Amadeo looked at me with an unreadable expression on his face.  
“I thought, you had left with the others. Why don’t you come inside?” The words sounded hollow in my own ears. I did not answer his question, because I didn’t know what to say. What was there to say? Santino was dead and how I felt about it did not change a thing.  
“I was hesitant to remind you of your greatest mistake, the greatest crime against our kind.”  
I flinched. I could hardly blame him. These had been my words, although he had not held them against me until now.  
But I still saw him before me, in his black robes instead of the splendid clothes I had bought him when he had still been with me, devoted to the order, no longer considering that life could be different. If had made him a vampire later, if I had allowed him to mature a little more, maybe he would have been able to withstand. Instead he had become another coven leader who had followed Santino’s example.   
“Amadeo, I …”   
“Don’t call me that!” I closed my mouth. Except from the incident with Sybil and Benji, he had never spoken to me that way. But he wasn’t finished yet. “Amadeo died long ago. He died when he lay awake in his coffin until the rising sun forced him to sleep, thinking of you, grieving for you. He died with every nightmare of you burning.”   
I was stunned. He had grieved for me? Well, of course I had expected that he had for a little while, but when I had seen him in the coven, he had seemed perfectly accustomed, content with where he was.   
He came in and sat down in an armchair facing me. His next question took me off guard. “Are you disappointed?”  
“In what?”   
“In me.”   
I wanted to say something, but I was at a loss for words. I couldn’t exactly say no without lying. Still it hurt to see him so obviously distressed, although his expression hadn’t changed. The signs were subtle. He had become a master of hiding his true feelings.  
Obviously, he did not expect an answer, but continued speaking right away, corrected himself. “No, I know you’re disappointed in me. I mean in the fact that I survived against your prediction. You told Lestat that you thought I would go into the fire or the sun sooner or later after the coven was destroyed. Are you disappointed I didn’t do it?”  
I felt cold all over. How could he say that? I remembered the absolute dread, the anguish when I had thought him dead after the incident with Memnoch, the pure relief when I had found out he was still alive. “What? Of course not.”  
His only answer was a bitter smile, as if he didn’t believe me.   
“Ama … Armand, please, I know how all this must sound for you, but …”  
Again, he cut me off, his voice so angry, and still, it shook slightly. Out of anger or hurt?   
“Stop it! You know nothing! How would it sound to you, if your maker, who swore he would love you forever, called you his greatest crime?”  
“That was merely because of your youth.”  
“I was not that young, Marius! I look old enough to get along just fine! And I’m more than 500 years old now, I don’t think you should keep using my ‘youth’ as an excuse.” He got up and walked over to the window while I watched him. I had to admit, he wasn’t completely wrong. What I had done to him was nothing compared to what Lestat had done to Claudia. Amadeo had been 17 and fully aware of what I had been planning to do. Still, if he had been older …  
“How would it sound to you, if your maker, who claimed he loved you, who you thought dead for the longest time, knew that you were in the hands of a satanic coven, and just decided to walk away?”  
His voice was so full of pain that I got up without thinking and walked over to him. I raised my hand to reach out to him, but I saw that this gesture was unwanted and would not give him comfort, so I let it sink down again.  
Instead I told him what I had told myself for so many years. A version of the truth I had made myself believe. “If you had wanted to leave, you could have. You could have saved yourself. I made you what you are, my blood is powerful, you were stronger than them.”   
“Does that make you feel better about yourself? Or do you not even need such a reassurance because at that point you didn’t care anymore already?”  
“Armand, I do care, and you know it.”  
“Do I?” The tears he couldn’t hold back anymore stung, but even more so did his words. “Then tell me why, why would I have left? What was waiting for me outside of the coven? I thought you were dead, you were everything and I saw you burn, and my whole world went down in flames with you. Tell me, Marius, why should I have left and where would I have gone?”  
Was this the only reason he had stayed with the coven? No, that would mean that what had happened with Sybil and Benji would pale in comparison to this betrayal. Automatically, without thinking, I once more tried to defend myself. “You could have started a new life. Lestat was alone, too, after Magnus …” I broke up. The moment the words had left my mouth I regretted them deeply.   
I remembered Lestat’s portrayal of me. Marius, the wise father figure, knowing the answers to all the questions. Had I been a fool all along? Had I betrayed my beloved Amadeo in my pride and hurt? In my fear?   
Fear of what? What could I have been afraid of?   
But I knew it, didn’t I?   
All these years I had told myself that Amadeo hadn’t wanted me anymore, that he had found a new home and family with the coven. That he could just have left if he had wanted to. I had even been disappointed that he hadn’t done it, and for the first time I allowed myself to face the injustice I had done to him. He had asked me the perfect question just a moment ago. Why should he have left? Why indeed …   
Of course, I couldn’t read his thoughts, but I once thought I knew him through and through. How could I have been so wrong?   
He had been through a horrible trauma, he had thought me dead, the coven members had certainly done their best to break his will. He had been alone and afraid and I had left him.   
“Oh yes, Lestat.” His voice was dripping with bitterness, bitterness I deserved. It had been a completely different situation. Once more I had done him wrong by comparing his situation to Lestat’s. I shouldn’t have brought him into that. “So I was not strong enough for you, is that it? I was not as strong and bold as Lestat, was I? Maybe not. But when Lestat’s maker went into the flames he had known him for mere hours. But I loved you, Marius, with all I had in me. And then I saw you burn, I was grieving, I was alone, I didn’t care what happened to me. And at some point, I had just … I didn’t know … how to …” His voice broke and he stopped speaking. Tears were running freely now, but he did not allow himself to sob. He wasn’t a boy anymore, I had to stop treating him like one, talking down on him, making decisions for him.   
Still, as I saw him before me, so broken, almost defeated, I wanted to hold him, as I had done so long ago.  
I decided to just lay a hand on his arm instead, but he pushed me away and for once I respected this and did not try to touch him again.   
Instead more excuses. “Armand, I couldn’t have known, I cannot read your mind, you know that. I had been hurt myself, I was disappointed to see you there …” What in the name of God was wrong with me? Couldn’t I just forget my cursed pride and admit a mistake? Beg for forgiveness? Tell him it wasn’t his fault, that I should have seen what was right before my eyes? That I should have understood what had held him there? That he hadn’t betrayed me? That I was sorry for everything I had said and for everything I had failed to do?   
I opened my mouth, tried to find the words, but he spoke again before I could.   
“They would have killed me, if I hadn’t joined them! I was still in shock from everything that happened, I was weak from them starving me. I couldn’t have fought them then if I had wanted to. But them killing me would have been preferable to you, wouldn’t it? You could have grieved for the sweet little martyr, painted his portraits and I would have been out of your life for good.”  
“No!” I had not intended it to come out so loud and he flinched back. Still I did not stop, ignoring my own pain at his words, which were perfectly justified, now that I finally understood what he had indeed been through. It also didn’t matter that I was crying now, too, for the first time in front of anyone else for who knew how many years. My voice shook. “I never ever wanted you to die, Amadeo. In all my existence there was not a single moment in which I wanted you dead.” That was true, even in all my misguided disappointment in him for joining the coven I had never wanted him dead.   
“Well, you have an interesting way of showing that.”   
I was quiet for a moment. I knew that the only way to make him believe me was to be completely honest with him and share a truth I had only just discovered myself. As shameful as it was. “I was afraid, you know.”  
He looked confused. “Afraid? Of them? The coven?”  
“No. If I had known that you would have come with me, I would have fought them gladly. I was afraid you had forgotten me. Afraid you would join them in fighting me. I may have just let you kill me if the alternative was hurting you. That was what I was afraid of.” It seemed even more real, now that I had spoken it aloud.   
He looked at me for a long time and the silence was so deafening that I wanted to say something just to break it, but he spoke first, his voice barely a whisper.   
“I would have come with you. If I had known you were alive, if you had come, if I had seen you, I would have fought them all myself.”  
Before I knew it, a very quiet sob escaped me together with fresh tears. Knowing how much pain I could have spared him, made the last bit of my pride vanish.   
“I will not insult you again by asking for your forgiveness. But I am sorry. For all the pain I caused you. For not being there when I should have been. For breaking all the promises I ever made you.”  
He brushed his tears away, took a deep breath before speaking again. “So you told the whole world repeatedly – because this will be published too, you know – what a terrible and weak fledgling I am because you were afraid I’d reject you if you came to me? You didn’t come to me when I most needed you, because you were afraid I wouldn’t want you?”  
“It does sound ridiculous, doesn’t it?” What else could I say?   
“So the Great Marius is not perfect after all.”   
There was almost something like humour in his voice and a bitter laugh escaped me. “Believe me, I’m far from perfect. For what it’s worth, Armand, I am proud of you. You have come far after the theatre was gone, after Louis and you parted ways. You are not weak, I never thought you were.”  
He looked me in the eyes, then sighed. “It means something. It means a lot.” It felt good to hear that, if only for the vague hope that it would give him the chance to heal. From old wounds and fresh ones I had inflicted on him tonight with my ignorant words. Without thinking I reached out a third time and this time he did not push me away when I touched his arm.   
“You’re terrible, you know. I came back to be angry with you”, he said instead.   
“Which you have every right to.”  
“Indeed. I came here to tell you I hated you and I never wanted to see you again. I wanted to tell you to stay out of my life.”  
It hurt to hear that, it was more than understandable, but it hurt nonetheless.   
He must have seen my pain and rolled his eyes. “Originally. You can’t even let me hate you properly, can you?”   
Now the humour in his voice was more obvious, but I hesitated to smile, let alone laugh. We looked at each other for a long moment, and then we both burst out laughing anyway. Short and maybe a little uncomfortable, but still a shared laugh.   
“It is almost dawn.” I said this mostly to break the silence once more, but it was true anyway. It was too late for him to leave and find a safe place, if he didn’t want to sleep below ground. “Will you stay? It is too late to safely go somewhere else. You can leave tomorrow.” I hesitated, looking out of the window instead of at him, still ridiculously afraid of rejection, but it was that fear that had brought us to where we were. “Or you can stay. We can hunt together and then … if you want to … talk some more.”  
“Do you want me to stay? Be honest, Marius, please. If you made this offer because you feel guilty now or any kind of obligation, please be honest this time. Please.” His voice was steady once more, almost calm. I admired him. He truly was not a boy anymore and the wish to get to know him as he was today grew in me.   
“No. I do feel guilt, that is true. But I see now that you don’t need me.” That was painful to admit. “I want you to stay. I want to get to know the person my boy has become. Pari passu this time.”   
He looked at me thoughtfully, then nodded. “Alright then”, he said to my surprise. “Pari passu.” The slightest hint of a smile came to his lips. “I will not call you Master again.”  
“I would not ask for that. And you haven’t today. Marius is fine. I am no longer your master and you are no longer a boy.”  
He looked as relieved as I felt. For once I had said the right thing.   
“I will stay for the day and … tomorrow night.”   
That was all I had hoped for, all things considered, and I couldn’t help but smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The same dialogue as in the first chapter couldn’t be avoided, I hope it was still interesting to see Marius’s side of the story! I’m looking forward to writing the last chapter, until then I’ll be happy if you tell me what you think of this one :)

**Author's Note:**

> So, this was so not what I intended. I wanted Armand figuratively rip off his head and then leave him for good. They didn’t play along, they acted all on their own, I swear.  
> I hope you still like it.  
> I’m kind of interested in writing this again from Marius’s POV. What do you think?


End file.
